We fly to the drawers.
We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if only we find a cent. . . .
Hurrah!
We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it . . . we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh through our tears.
"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way . . . through my door. Then run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we won't tell anybody."
He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and call to him:
"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say.
"Yes," he answers, earnestly.
And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like drumsticks across to the baker's.
From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it. And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of forgiveness in his cap.